


Time to Say Goodbye

by Lianne



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9349787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lianne/pseuds/Lianne
Summary: Written in 2004After Buffy's death, Giles makes a decision (a different reason for Giles to leave Sunnydale)





	

Giles woke at nearly noon with a drum band doing drills in his head. It wasn't a hangover headache -- he'd had enough of those in his life to know what that was like. However, the distinction didn't make him feel any better.

He pushed himself up to a seated position on the rug in the middle of his living room and looked around, shivering slightly. It wasn't actually cold -- he was in California, after all -- but the breeze from the fan up in the loft verged on uncomfortable against naked flesh, and the memory of what he had done the night before didn't help either.

Puddles of wax that had been candles -- plain beeswax, made by hand with no artificial ingredients -- sat on the coffee table in mute reproach. A knife with a dark crust lay next to it, and he mentally reminded himself to wash and bandage his hand. The book -- one that he'd carried with him for years, but had not opened since that night. The night that Ripper had died.

His stomach rose up in his throat, and he forced it back down again. His threadbare robe was lying over the back of his armchair, and he quickly pulled it on, armoring himself against the day and what he had done. His glasses were on a bookshelf, sitting on top of the old eight-track player that had been a gag gift years ago. He put them on, almost like a disguise. He opened a window to get rid of the last of the burnt wax smell, then moved to clean up. The candle remains went in the trash, while the knife was cleaned and returned to the metal lockbox along with the book. As for the stink of Chaos, there was little he could do about that. Even a full purification wouldn't get rid of it. It would simply have to go away on its own, over time. If ever.

He found himself staring at the table top, still feeling a tad dazed. He really should go get something to clean it with, although he wasn't sure that the wax stains would ever go away. Perhaps he should get rid of it. He didn't think he would ever be able to cleanse the memory of what he'd done from it.

Two months it had taken. Two months to gather the ingredients. Two months to prepare himself for what he planned. And in the end...

He hadn't been able to do it. To pull her back from where she was. She had earned her rest. She didn't deserve to be brought back to this world that had caused her so much pain and grief. Not to comfort her sister, her friends. Not even for a foolish old man who cared far more than he should have.

Giles shook his head, trying to clean away the last of the effects of his aborted spellcasting, then went back to cleaning up the residue. Nearly a quarter of a century he'd resisted the siren call of Chaos magic, only to give in at a weak moment. Already he could feel the withdrawal pains starting. Again.

Maybe the hangover feeling would be easier to deal with if he *were* drunk. There was a nearly full bottle of whiskey in the cabinet in the kitchen, and a half bottle of vodka in the freezer. He didn't usually keep alcohol in his apartment, but he'd flirted with alcoholism in the days after Buffy's... death. There, he said it. She was dead and she was not coming back.

Giles closed his eyes, fighting off a sudden vertigo. Even after all these weeks, it hadn't gotten any easier. Every night when he went to bed he remembered that night. The night he'd failed his charge. The night he'd become a murderer.

He was shaken from his bout of self-pity by the ring of the doorbell, followed by a pounding on the door. "Giles? Are you there?"

"Damn," he muttered to himself. He looked around, then grabbed the lock box and slid it under the sofa. "Just a moment," he called out. He straightened up and went to the front door. "What is it?" he asked, opening the door. Bright sunshine hit him in the face, making him wince.

"Giles, are you alright?" Dawn asked. "You didn't come in to the shop, and you didn't call. We were worried."

"Ah. Right." Giles looked down and realized that he was still wearing his robe and nothing under it. "I'm afraid I overslept. What time is it?"

"Noon. Overslept? Are you feeling okay?"

"What? Oh, I'm fine. Just.. tired. Um, I need to get dressed. Excuse me." With that, Giles almost fled up to the bedroom.

He'd been so focused on his self-appointed task that he hadn't done laundry lately, so finding something clean enough to put on was a task. Below, he could hear Dawn in the kitchen, setting a pot of water to boil. Tea. Yes, a cup of tea might be a good idea. Perhaps if he had some tea he would feel a little more like Rupert Giles, Watcher, former Librarian, shop keeper, and less like Ripper.

"Giles? The tea is going to get cold."

Giles came back to himself with a start. He was sitting on the edge of his bed staring off into space, his slacks in his hands. He shook his head and finished getting dressed, slapped a quick bandage on the cut across his left palm then headed down the stairs to the main level again.

Dawn met him at the bottom of the stairs with a fragrant steaming mug and a worried expression on her face. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?" she asked. "I could drive you to the doctor's."

That made Giles smile. Not because of the kindness of the author -- Dawn was always kind, bless her -- but because of her eagerness to drive him. She'd only recently gotten her driver's license and was always looking for an excuse to use it.

"I hate to disappoint you, but I will be quite fine," Giles said, reaching for the mug. "But thank you for the offer."

As she handed him the mug, their fingers brushed against each other and Giles stiffened. It wasn't as though he'd never touched the teenager before. In the years he'd known her there'd been other casual, accidental touches. But this time it was different. This time he was aware -- almost hyper-aware -- of the mystical energies surging below the surface image of a teenaged girl. The energies, carefully concealed, that made her the Key.

As well, he could feel the faint taint of Chaos magic that came from her own aborted attempt at raising the dead -- her mother, and thankfully she'd changed her mind at the last moment. These were things he'd never noticed about her before, but the newly reawakened part of him recognized them and was drawn to them. With the energy inherent in the Key there was so much he could do. Protect his children -- Xander, Willow, Anya, and all the others who had been drawn into the world of the Slayer. Prevent threats like Glory from rising again. Reshape the Watcher Council the way it should be...

Giles flinched away. He did his best to cover the reaction, but he could still see the flash of hurt on Dawn's face. He sipped the tea trying to get himself back under control.

Dawn. A young girl. Not a battery to draw on for his own purposes. That had been what Glory wanted with her. Giles felt nauseous. What was he becoming?

For a moment he felt like the tea was going to come back up, and he set the mug down on a side table. "I'm sorry," he told Dawn. "I just have a terrible headache. Could you please let Anya know that I will be leaving the shop in her very capable hands today?"

That brought a hint of a smile back to her face. "I'm sure she'll like that," Dawn said, some of her good humor returning. "She's always saying..." She stopped, the picture of embarrassment.

"That she does a better job of it than I do?" Giles suggested. He shook his head. "She may be right. I'm not sure that I was ever meant to be a shop-keeper." What he had been meant to be, trained to be, was a Watcher, and with his Slayer dead, he was beginning to realize that he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

"No! I mean..." The smile was gone again.

Giles started to reach out to pat her shoulder, but stopped himself before he touched her. He could still feel the vibrations from the last innocent touch. "Don't worry yourself," he told her, picking up the mug again so that he had something to occupy his hands. "I'm just being maudlin. I suppose I was due for a mid-life crisis sooner or later." Giles winced again. He felt older this morning than he had in a long time.

"You're not old," Dawn protested, and he realized that he had said the last out loud. "You're mature."

"That's kind of you to say, but the fact is, I am getting... older," Giles said. Then he shook his head. "Never mind me. Don't you have school today?"

Dawn snorted. "It's August, Giles. School doesn't start for another two weeks."

Oh. "Then perhaps you should be out enjoying the last of your summer vacation," he suggested.

"Are you sure?"

Giles forced a smile that he hoped looked natural. "Yes. Go have fun. Just be careful and make sure to be home before dark."

That made the corner of her mouth quirk up. "Yes, dad," she said. Then, without warning she reached out and grabbed Giles in a big hug.

Almost immediately Giles was swamped again by the awareness of all the potential inherent in the young girl, and it was all he could do not to jerk away, hurting her feelings again. Instead he hugged her awkwardly while trying to keep from spilling his tea. Finally, to his relief, she pulled back and Giles was surprised to see a hint of tears in her eyes.

"I don't think I ever told you this, but I'm really glad you're here," she said. "After mom... And then Buffy..." She stopped and brushed a tear away with the back of her hand. "Thank you," she finally said.

Giles could feel his own eyes starting to prickle. "Thank you, sweetheart," he said hoarsely, and kissed her forehead lightly, determinedly ignoring the surge he felt at the touch. Then he stepped back. "Now go have fun doing whatever it is teenagers do these days."

"Okay. I'll see you tonight. Take care of the headache."

"I will."

With that, she was gone, along with all the energy that had been tormenting him. Giles collapsed onto the sofa, gathering his thoughts.

It had been years since he'd last felt this way; when he'd made the break from Ethan and the Chaos magic after that ill-fated night. He could remember how difficult it had been to pull away from it. Every time he came into contact with anything related to Chaos magic for years had reached out to try to drag him back. It was like an addiction; one very difficult to recover from.

The headache he'd claimed to placate Dawn was becoming truth, and Giles rubbed removed his glasses so that he could rub the bridge of his nose. The only way he'd succeeded in breaking his addiction the last time was by cutting himself completely off from anything to do with magic, then carefully retraining himself to avoid anything to do with Chaos. It had been a long and difficult process, and in one night he had undone it all. What a fool he was.

What would he do now? There was not just Dawn to consider, there was Willow. And while Anya was no longer a demon, traces of that still clung to her. Even Xander, the most normal of the group, had been touched by magic many times in the past. Too many times.

And even now he could already feel the Hellmouth. Buried in the remains of the old high school, it hovered at the edges of his awareness, pulsing like a giant heart, calling to him. No wonder Ethan had kept returning.

Giles lifted the mug to take a sip of the rapidly cooling tea and found that his hand was shaking. In fact, it was shaking so badly that some of the liquid spilled over the side to run down his hand. The cuff of his last clean shirt was getting stained. He set the mug down on the reproachful coffee table. Dear Lord, how was he going to make it through this again, here of all places?

The answer was immediate. And painful.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed and got up to go do laundry. There was a lot to do.

>>>~~~<<<

The plane had been in the air for nearly an hour before Giles began to relax for the first time in more than a week. It had taken him that long to arrange matters, and he'd been a wreck towards the end. Getting into a brawl with Anya in the store; what had he been thinking?

But now he could no longer feel the energies of the Hellmouth vibrating around him, like a toothache impossible to ignore. He was surrounded now by the technology of flight and fellow passengers who could not be any more mundane.

The finger puppet Tara had given him at the impromptu farewell party at the airport was still on his finger, and he crooked it experimentally, smiling to himself. If they could still joke about their situation after all they'd been through, they would be fine without him, he told himself sternly.

"Cute."

"Hmm?" He glanced at his seatmate: a perfectly ordinary businessman who'd been thankfully silent thus far.

The man gestured to the finger puppet. "A gift from your kid?" he asked.

Giles looked at the tiny reminder of Sunnydale and smiled sadly. "Yes, you could say that."

One of his kids. He just hoped that they were ready. Because, like all parents before him, it was time to let go; time to let them face the future on their own.

He sighed, and tucked the toy into his carry bag, along with the handmade card. Time to let them go. Time to fix his own mistakes.

Time to go.


End file.
